Her illness and death prevented former Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall from having her day in court, but today 11 other APS educators were convicted. (AJC File,)

Her illness and death prevented former Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall from having her day in court, but today 11 other APS ... read more

And there are more guilty votes than I expected.

The Fulton County jury found 11 of the 12 educators guilty of conspiring to change answer sheets to protect their jobs and their schools.

While the 11 were found guilty of racketeering for allegedly cheating on the CRCT, the verdicts varied for some of the lesser felony charges they faced.

Former Dobbs Elementary School teacher Dessa Curb was acquitted of all charges.

This painful chapter is now over for the Atlanta schools. I suspect APS leaders want to put this behind them and focus on the future.

Was it the right ending? Were these charges justified given the testimony that suggested many of these educators were not up to the expectations -- unrealistic and unrelenting as they turned out to be -- of APS leadership.

These folks were weak. But the jury also found them criminal.

Right decision?

According to the AJC:

A racketeering indictment could mean a 20-year prison sentence. The other felonies carry prison sentences of as much as five and 10 years each.

The trial stretched five months with 162 witnesses who took the stand. Thousands of pages of testimony was introduced. Closing arguments lasted three days.

The former educators are accused of conspiring to change answers on the 2009 CRCT to artificially inflate scores to satisfy federal benchmarks. The prosecution said bonuses and raises were awarded based on test scores.

The alleged cheating was discovered when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported inexplicable spikes in test scores. Eventually, a criminal investigation was opened which led to a 29-count indictment two years ago. Two of those counts have been dropped, leaving 27 for the jury to consider.

Before the cheating was exposed, the narrative of the Atlanta school system was it was a vastly improving district that took a no-nonsense approach to teachers and administrators who did not meet its high academic standards. Its superintendent, Beverly Hall, won national awards.